Through the River Styx
by Neutral Ground
Summary: This is how it ends for Commander Nicole Shepard. This is how a sin older than knowing is undone. This is a sacrifice none will forget. ME3 ending rewrite/repair job with a mind to character and lore, Liara/femShep, not a one-shot (oops, actually a one-shot)


Nicole Shepard stood alone, at the end of all things.

Bleeding. Broken. Barely holding together in more ways than one. Both Anderson and the Illusive Man, the two men who had cast the longest shadows over Nicole's life, were dead behind her. She fell onto the console, urging it to work. Huge doors of light opened before her, showing her Earth in all its ruin. All its beauty. She flicked a switch, and the arms of the Citadel began to open. She smiled.

_Front-row seat_. She would've laughed if her lungs didn't hurt. She leaned back against the floor and watched the world end. She was bleeding. Too much. She'd be dead soon.

_I'm sorry, Liara_. The Reapers had made a liar out of Nicole. She'd promised Liara she'd come back. Now….

"_Shepard? Commander?"_

Hackett. Nicole managed to roll onto her knees.

"What do you need me to do?" She tried to get to one foot. Failed. She almost wanted to laugh. On the Citadel, with her mission nearly complete, Commander Shepard's greatest challenge was standing the fuck up. Instead, she crawled, leaving a bloody mess on the floor behind her.

"_The Crucible's not firing … it's got to be something on your end. Commander Shepard!"_

For an absurd moment, she wanted to tell Hackett to solve his own goddamn problems. Instead, she followed chain of command. As ever.

"I don't see … I'm not sure how to …."

She fell. The fight, after thirty-two years, finally went out of her. She closed her eyes.

"_Commander!"_

Light surrounded her. She didn't dare to believe it. Something started moving her. Up. She didn't have the power to question it. The light grew, pierced through her closed eyes, consumed her. She thought of the things she missed. Her ship. Her crew. Liara.

_All this for nothing,_ she thought bitterly, blinded by the light. After a long while, she realized the platform had stopped. Her limbs didn't ache so much. Still hurt like hell, but she could move. She flexed her arm experimentally, and it worked. She slowly rose to her feet, staring at some sort of huge superstructure, massive machines surrounding a great beam of light. It blocked off most of the view of earth, but her home-planet was there. Burning and fighting and surviving. She managed to get to her feet. Started limping towards the device, without really knowing why.

She collapsed. Fell to her knees.

_No_. She couldn't let this happen. She'd rip off one leg and use it as a crutch for the other if it meant beating this damn thing.

"What do I do?" Nicole whispered. Alone. "What do I…"

A hologram appeared before her. Nicole blinked. For an absurd moment, her mind thought, _Keeper_. But no. This was not one of the Citadel's caretakers. It had the same body structure, the same delicate body and insect-like legs, but it stood much taller, each of its four legs ramrod straight, and its head, rather than wide and bug-eyed, was flat, bulging at the back. Each hand ended in seven delicate fingers. It looked at her, and spoke. It had no mouth to move.

"_We are surprised to find you here. We are surprised to find anyone here. We feel the edge of indoctrination creeping at your senses, but you resist. We feel the probes of foreign bodies in your mind, but you resist. You are impressive, Nicole Shepard. You may be able to do what needs to be done."_

"What … are you?" Nicole managed to spit out. Blood trickled down her lips as she spoke. The hologram approached her and looked down at her, with its deep, black eyes.

"_We are the catalyst. We are the last remnants of the first race to fall to the Reapers. It is our great sin that you have suffered. The undoing of that sin is in your hands."_

The hologram approached her kneeling form and extended a long, many-fingered hand. It touched her cheek. She felt the wet haze of its holographic makeup touching her skin. It stung against the blood.She looked in its eyes. She thought—no, but that was stupid sentiment. Still, she couldn't help but think that those great black eyes looked sad.

"_We know you, Commander Shepard. We have watched. Silent. Imprisoned. You stand at the end. You no doubt have questions. We will provide any answers. You have earned them."_

Shepard wanted so desperately to believe. Wanted to … but she couldn't. This was too easy.

"How can I trust you?" Shepard asked, trying to force herself back onto her feet. The effort made her head swim. The hologram did not seem moved.

"_A fair question. We are afraid there is no easy answer, only this: you do not know how to activate the device you have called the Crucible. We can tell you. If we do not, our sin will win. If we are lying, our sin will win. You have only a single choice, to trust us."_

Shepard frowned at the words, staring into the hologram. She didn't like being powerless, at the mercy of another. She hated the thought that Liara, wherever she was, had no hope but this strange hologram. Unbidden, she remembered a line from an old, earth film that Liara had shown her as part of her "research," back before all this madness. _"I think a servant of the Enemy would look fairer, and feel fouler."_

In spite of herself, she grinned. She was looking at a giant bug. Definitely not very fair.

"Okay. You want to help me … how. How do I fire this thing," Shepard mumbled. The hologram nodded its strange, elongated head.

"_Approach this virtual console." _It waved a hand, and a holographic interface appeared behind it. _"All of the ones you call Reapers rely on a single, massively complex wavelength. It is their strength, their tool, but it can also be a weakness. If you activate the Crucible, that wavelength will become disrupted. It will disable their systems. Throw them into disrepair. All but the most rudimentary Reaper constructs will be destroyed or disabled, including the Reapers themselves."_

"That seems too easy."

"_There is a catch. All Reaper technology will be cease to function. That includes this station. This Crucible. This Citadel. The Citadel will fall to Earth. We will die."_

"All right," Nicole muttered, forcing herself onto her feet. She managed it, but only barely. She started to limp towards the holographic console. The hologram moved out of her way. "So what are you? Why are you helping me?" She asked, as she looked at the interface. It seemed simple.

"_We are a remnant. A copy. A backup. A redundancy. We are the last vanguard, the last chance for our species to redeem its sin. We are helping you because we may be able to do what we could not."_

Nicole laid a hand on the interface. It opened up, and there were only two options. Two large buttons. The simplicity of it made her want to laugh, or cry, or both.

"So what could you not do? And while you're at it, how about you explain these buttons to me?"

"_Will you listen to our story?"_ The hologram looked at her. Again, Nicole couldn't help but think that there was a sadness, somewhere deep in its eyes. _"It will be brief."_ Nicole nodded.

"I want to know. I want to know why we're fighting this damn war."

"_Yes. We were a young race. We believed ourselves to be the first. You know the abominations you call the Keepers. We were, in ways, much like the creatures you know. We worked together, towards a single goal at a time, and immediately accomplished it. We harnessed our world, then flew to the stars. We built the mass relays, because we needed them. We knew we were alone in the universe."_

The hologram paused, as though waiting for Shepard to say something. She didn't. It seemed somehow wrong.

"_We were wrong. After millennia of our searching and building, we found life beyond our own on a desolate world in the farthest reaches of space. Though that is perhaps inaccurate. What we found was a grave, an entire planet filled with dead. Trapped in stasis, as though flash-frozen. We knew, in our naiveté, in our pride, that we must save them. So we did. We built the earliest form of what you call Harbinger. We took their dead bodies and made them into a mechanical mind. It seemed an elegant solution to our loneliness."_

Nicole felt like she should've been surprised, but she wasn't. She'd seen enough horrors to last several lifetimes. She pressed her hand to her side again. The blood was stopping. That was bad.

"_At first, there was peace. But soon, Harbinger grew to resent us. We do not know why. Their mind is foreign to us. It discovered, or perhaps always knew, how to indoctrinate organic minds. It slowly turned our race against itself. Set us to war, a concept we did not understand. In the end, its final punishment was to twist us into the Keepers you know, and shackle our last, small consciousness here. This was its greatest achievement. Our mind was imprisoned within this station, forced to watch our twisted descendants march, forced to watch cycles of destruction, as so many races fell prey to Harbinger's baited web. The plans you found, the Crucible, were our small defiance. It was all we could do to provide subtle suggestions to the most brilliant minds of each cycle, to give them the idea, to spur them onto the only course that might end our great sin."_

"That sounds a lot like the Reapers," Nicole said, her head light. She wished the console was solid. She needed something to lean on.

"_Of course it does. We created them. Remember us, Commander Shepard. Remember our hubris. Remember what it cost. The same mistake cannot be made again."_ It reached out and touched her again. She twisted away from the hologram.

"How could I forget? Do you know—do you know how much I've lost? How much I've given up to stop these damn things?" The pain in her voice was naked. She'd lost and seen too much blood to wear her military mask now.

"_Yes. Now you will stop them. There remains only one choice."_

Shepard looked at the hologram. "A choice? You said this thing uses the Reaper signal."

"_Yes. All that remains is for you to decide how to use it. You may change the signal so drastically that all the Reapers will die, their monstrosities will fail, and their minds will vanish. This station will plunge into your planet, and we will die here, as will you."_

"And the other choice?"

"_You may send the Reapers away. You may control them, make them flee. They will not return for another 50,000 years. You will never know them again. You will be able to go home. Your lives will be easier. The Reapers will return, but not for you."_

"Why would you even say that?" Nicole glared at the hologram, accusingly. "Why would you even offer such a choice?"

"_We did not design the Crucible. We merely suggested it. Whoever decided that it could take two paths—they died long ago. The choice is not ours to make."_

"All right, so how do I kill them? Which one is my 'nuke the Reapers' option?" Nicole asked.

"_Touch the right-most button."_

"That simple, huh?"

"_The Crucible was designed to be simple, so that whoever stood where you stand would be able to use it. We will leave you now, Commander Shepard. Thank you."_

There was a flash, and the hologram was gone. Nicole was alone again, staring at the greenish holographic keypad in front of her. Two buttons. The easy way and the hard way.

_Sorry, Liara._ She pressed a finger to the right-most button and slumped to the floor. Her eyes slid shut. She felt something like a pulse traveling through the floor, traveling through her … there was a loud noise, a roaring so loud that it filled her up. She didn't care. She thought of her friends. The ones she'd lost. The ones she was leaving behind.

_Looks like there'll be none of those little blue babies after all_. A tear made its way out of her eye. She hadn't cried in years, not since Mindoir, the first time she'd lost everything. She figured she deserved it now. She opened her eyes by sheer stubbornness. She wanted to see Earth one last time. It'd never been home, not really … but it stood for something. She watched it, a blue silhouette in space, slowly growing closer.

It was beautiful and blue, just like the woman she loved.

_But hey, we did it. There'll be a future. She'll love someone else. She'll find—_

A violent explosion. A sudden crash. Her body flew, like a ragdoll, and then there was darkness.

There was an end.


End file.
